Claws and Teeth and Tulle
by Lorata
Summary: Nobody gets to choose their image, not even Careers. After a final showdown injury that overwrites the rest of Petra's brutal, bloody Games, the girl with District 2's highest kill count has to play the broken doll for an over-sympathetic Capitol audience. At least her mentor knows the truth, and Brutus makes sure his girl doesn't forget it.


When Petra was fourteen years old, she stood in a white-walled room, naked and stone-faced while a group of trainers circled her and pointed out every physical flaw and a few perceived character ones as well. Part of being a Career tribute involves maintaining control at all times unless it makes sense to lose it, and so Petra had practiced staying silent and unaffected while the trainers did their best to break her calm. The prep team can be vicious, they warned her, and she's not allowed to break.

The first time she tried to keep stoic Petra snapped and went to stab a trainer, only to stop empty-handed because even she wasn't good enough to hide a dagger on her person with no clothes to hide it. The trainers had raised an eyebrow, given her back her clothes, then made her do suicide sprints across the gym until her arms and legs gave out while her face burned with humiliation.

She kept it together the next time, albeit while grinding her teeth, and the trainers-as-prep-team remarked on how her resting face just looked so _angry_. The time after that Petra managed coolly detached, and afterward one of the trainers actually grinned and tousled her hair on the way out. "Tell the kitchen I said you could have a cookie," she said. "Good job today, chipmunk."

How the trainer had found out Petra's childhood nickname had baffled Petra too much to protest its use — plus it sounded different coming from an affectionate trainer than it did when Selene or Lachlan sing-songed it at her when her cheeks puffed in fury — and she'd flushed and run off to do a hundred pushups before trusting herself to go to the kitchen.

Selene still swept the field with her acting and image scores, but by the end Petra hadn't been far behind. Selene made it a natural extension of herself while for Petra it always meant acting, but faking it when she smiled and twirled her hair didn't matter so much because she meant it when she killed. In the end Petra figured it didn't matter; she got to be the Volunteer and Selene washed out to do whatever washouts do, so ha ha to her.

What they didn't tell her was that acting skills aren't just for the Arena; if nothing else they're even more important afterward.

Brutus rests a hand on Petra's shoulder, and to anyone else it will look like mentorly concern but his fingers dig in and Petra feels the warning. She loosens her grip, lets the knife fall back into the hidden pocket in her dress. She pulls her hands out, laces her fingers together on her lap, and breathes through her nose. No cookies for this performance but the Capitol cosmetics representative in front of her doesn't appear to notice, and good enough.

Petra's hip aches. The lace scratches against her skin. Her fingers twitch with the need to curl around a blade and her chest burns and if she could just draw blood then maybe they would stop this. If she drove her knife into this idiot's throat and watched him choke and splutter on his own fluids, if she dipped her fingers in the gash and drew smile lines up from the corners of his mouth then nobody would ever call her a _poor little thing_ again.

But Brutus' hand tightens again and Petra chokes back the growl or the sob or whatever it is sticks in her throat and makes it hard to swallow. She is a professional. She will do her job.

Even if that job means agreeing to endorse a line of Capitol hair products named after her. "Normally we save product endorsements like this for District 1," the man says, and Petra masks her squawk of outrage by forcing a pained expression and rubbing at her leg. "But you, with that hair! It's stunning, adorable, everyone wants it. So fierce, so fiery! And I had this line ready and waiting and I thought, why wait for District 1 to win when I have such a perfect candidate right here!"

"I'm honoured," Petra says, as though the word doesn't taste like dust in her mouth. As though it's not an insult to people who get up in the dark every day and head down to the granite mines to work until it's dark again because it keeps their family fed and the nation built on solid stone. As though it's not a betrayal of every single tribute who fought and bled and died for honour to turn around and use it for flowered shampoo.

"Ah, see, I thought so," the man says, beaming. "That's what we thought we'd call it, you know, Petra: the Honour Collection."

Petra's breath comes faster in her chest, and she squeezes her hands together until a jolt of pain shoots up her wrist, sharp and staggering. It's enough to chase the anger away, and when Petra glances down her little finger sits at an odd angle to the rest of her hand, dislocated by the sudden pressure.

"I think I should get her back," Brutus says, reaching down and closing his hand over hers. The pain rockets up her arm with every beat of her pulse and Petra clings to it, lets it take her rage and turn it into something sharp and real, and she misses the rest of the conversation.

As soon as they're out of sight Brutus takes her hand, holds it steady and snaps her finger back into place. The dull ache is nowhere near as satisfying as the sharp throbbing from earlier, and it spreads out through Petra's hand like a bad memory. Brutus sighs, shakes his head and puts his hand on her shoulder again.

Petra walks the whole way back, refusing to let Brutus carry her for the cameras. The Capitol doctors predicted she never would but she had anyway, and that's what started all of this because nobody likes to be wrong. Petra made her choice and she doesn't regret it but it does mean she's going to exercise her choice every chance she gets, no matter how much they love it when Brutus lifts her into his arms.

She forces as much of the limp out of her stride until Brutus tightens his grip. Petra grits her teeth, but he's right and this is her job and they want to see her fight but they also get off on her struggle and so she allows the unevenness back into her walk. There will be pictures being taken right now proclaiming her bravery, and Petra blinks back tears and thinks of slitting a boy's throat with the broken haft of her mace.

* * *

There's a mob at the platform, there always is, and it used to fill her with pride but today it sours. "Almost home, sweetheart," Brutus says in her ear, and Petra's smile doesn't crack because she's a Victor and a fucking professional and she is greater than an itchy collar and lace that scratches against her thighs and _pink_ , why is it always pink! Brutus keeps his arm around her waist, fingers digging in hard, and Petra's fingers twitch with the urge to knife him in the ribs just to see what he'll do but no, no. The crowds are there, and the cameras, and somewhere President Snow is watching and she can't disappoint him, if nothing else.

And so Petra smiles, shy and not too wide, turning her face toward Brutus' shoulder in a play at acting demure in front of the throng while she uses the chance to grit her teeth and hiss out a quiet curse. She killed ten children on live television; she made love to a beautiful, deadly girl while the bodies cooled around her, sucked another boy's blood off the girl's mace-callused fingers and angled herself for the cameras, but no, now she's the little girl who walks with a limp and inspires pity in everyone she meets.

Petra makes it to the inside of the train, standing in the doorway with her head against Brutus' shoulder, and she waits until the carriage trembles and the doors slide shut and the train takes off toward home before pulling away and screaming. The attendant flees, good riddance; Polyvenna, used to Petra's histrionics, rolls her eyes and picks up a fluted glass and a bottle of something pink and sparkly and heads off to her private car.

"I hate it!" Petra bursts out. Brutus stands silent at the door, hands balled at his sides and shoulders tense. Suddenly even just standing here in the costume they dressed her in is too much, and Petra yanks at her dress, pulling it over her head and revelling in the sound of stitches and fabric tearing.

But it's too tight, of course it is, and she only has one hand to work with so she doesn't fall over, and Petra gets stuck halfway. Brutus sighs and ambles over. "I'll help you out of it if you don't stick me in the hand," he says, and Petra snarls at him through a layer of tulle but it's either let him or spend the next ten minutes raging. Brutus gets the zipper with a smooth motion, and he helps Petra tug the stupid outfit over her head.

She stands there in her slip, shivering in the air-conditioned carriage, and Brutus sighs and takes off his shirt, draping it over her shoulders. It's far too big but it's warm and smells like him even with the stupid way too soft Capitol fabric, and now he's in his undershirt and Petra has no pants on and that makes them even. She laughs a little in spite of herself, digging a fist into her eye, and Brutus lets out another exhale and moves to do up the shirt for her.

"I can do it," Petra says, mulish.

"I know you can," Brutus says back, slipping the buttons into the holes with a deftness that belies his giant, clumsy-looking fingers. "I'm sorry. They'll get tired of it eventually. It's just for now."

One day Petra won't look so young, and one thing she's learned about the Capitol is that Victors like her, the young, pretty ones, they lose their sheen once the years start to show, but that's far away. In a world with Remake, where the only thing different about twenty years of Caesar Flickerman's grinning face on television is the colour of his hair, Petra can stay innocent as long as they want her to.

"I don't know how the president lives there," Petra says. She tugs Brutus' sleeves down over her hands, staring at the cuffs as they reach down nearly to the ends of her fingers. "How he goes to parties with those people all the time. Those people and their _fucking shampoo_."

Brutus drops down onto a berth, leaning forward with his hands between his knees. "Watch your mouth, now," he warns her, and Petra bites back a wince. It's true, the Capitol is always watching, and what would the president say if he heard her talking like this?

It's just, no one told her when she was a trainee that there are two Capitols. There's the president and those who serve the people and make the laws, the ones who keep the country safe and secure and fed, and then there's — everyone else. It shouldn't surprise Petra, not when even in Two there are Peacekeepers and quarriers and civilians and ex-Careers; she's shaken the hands of smiling ladies with skin soft and smooth and untouched by labour right here in her home district. The population of the Capitol is even greater; it makes sense that there are different social strata there, too.

The edifice of the Capitol and the people who work every day to keep it running, they have Petra's loyalty until her last heartbeat and beyond. For them — for the president, who knows the truth, who looked at Petra's ridiculous getup and manufactured tragic story with a small, wry smile and asked her how her daily walks in the Village were going instead of commenting on how much it must pain her to stand in the ballroom — Petra will endure a thousand feathery-haired idiots tutting at her. She'll even endorse their damn shampoo, though she sure as the Reaping isn't going to actually wear it.

Brutus is still watching her, and he doesn't say a word but Petra deflates anyhow. It's not her mentor's fault that the people want their story; it's Petra's job to do what's asked of her and not tantrum. Duty and loyalty don't only apply when you get to do things you want. The Centre told her that the first time Petra had to play the creepy doll in image training, and Brutus reminds her on the train every time they head in to the Capitol.

"I'm sorry," Petra says. Her hip aches — too much tensing, it's all the way through her body, not just in her shoulders, and the pain twinges — and she walks stiffly and lowers herself down beside him. "I'm trying, it's just — hard." She wipes her eyes again in defiance of the stinging. "Nobody else has to do this. Not like me. Nobody else has to pretend they're weak."

Brutus places his hand on the back of her head, holding her steady. He could give her a lot of bullshit, find some pretty answer to make it sound all right, but he doesn't. "They don't think you're weak," he says, sounding tired. "They think you're strong and brave, same as folks at home."

"They think I'm strong and brave because I can get out of bed without crying over how sad and difficult my life is," Petra says sharply, but Brutus taps his finger against her skull and she takes the warning. "No, I know. I'm just — I'll be glad to go home."

Brutus' hand is warm and solid. "Me too, sweetheart."

* * *

It's tempting to leave the train and head back to the Village still wearing Brutus' shirt hanging down to her knees, but Petra knows better than that. As the train winds its way through the mountains, the sharp scent of pine drifting through the open windows, Petra slips into her room and changes into real clothes. At least in Two she can dress more plainly, simple clothing that might be finer than anything Petra touched in her life before becoming the Volunteer but not an embarrassment in front of people who've worked fifteen hours a day since they were sixteen.

Brutus gives her a small smile when she comes back out, and he glares at Polyvenna when the escort tuts at Petra's hair, mussed from frustrated tugging and leaning her head against Brutus' shoulder. "I've got it," Brutus says gruffly, and he takes the brush from the woman's outstretched hand.

Petra sits and lets Brutus comb her hair, and as always the touch soothes the last of her nerves. Brutus twists her hair into a loose braid and tugs the end to let her know it's done, and Petra leans back against his chest and closes her eyes until the train stops.

There's a crowd of kids around the station when they pull in, all of them under twelve with a mix of bare wrists and Centre bracelets. They all pretend to be loitering for no reason under the watchful gaze of the Peacekeepers, and Petra laughs and signs their schoolbooks and shows them a few tricks with the butterfly knife she uses when she's not trying to give people nightmares with the real ones she keeps under her clothes.

Finally Brutus clears his throat and they scatter away, and he snorts and leads Petra away toward the parking lot. Emory's there with his truck, and she smiles at Petra and tosses Brutus the keys. Soon enough they're off, rumbling away down the road and up toward the Village. Emory doesn't ask how it went, doesn't make small talk, and Petra is grateful for the silence.

No one in the Capitol has requested Emory's presence for anything other than official business in over almost twenty years. It bothers Emory that they've all but forgotten about her, and Petra isn't going to make it worse by admitting that she's almost jealous.

"Don't pull that shit with your finger again, by the way," Brutus says once the station disappears around a corner. Petra had almost forgotten, but then her hand twinges as a reminder. "You know better than that."

Petra could argue — she hadn't meant to, not really, in her Field Exam she'd done it to remind herself what was real and what wasn't and this had been an echo of frustration, nothing conscious — but Brutus is her mentor and as always, he's right. "Yes sir," Petra says, and turns to stare past Emory out the window as the trees flash past.

Once they're back home in the Village Brutus takes her out behind the house and fights her down, only this time he doesn't pin her down right from the start. He drags it out, lets Petra haul herself to her feet, staggering as her hip screams under the weight. The longer it lasts the less her control, and the trainers would be tutting and calling her out for being sloppy but Brutus doesn't. He ducks her blows and knocks her back with the same neutral frown on his face, and the line of tension inside her snaps.

The frown breaks when Petra gets a knife in his ribs, and that she didn't mean to do. Petra stumbles back, staring at the bloodstain slowly growing across the front of Brutus' white shirt. Brutus grunts and pulls the knife free, tossing it onto the grass, and he closes the distance between them, takes Petra's hand and claps it right against the torn skin.

"You feel that?" Brutus asks as the blood pulses hot against her fingers. "Remember how that feels?" He lets go, then swipes his bloody hands across Petra's face. It's warm and slick and sticky all at once, and the smell of it fills her nose and settles on her tongue, sharp and tangy and familiar. "They didn't take your claws, Petra. You could kill every one of them in that room without breaking a sweat, don't forget that."

Brutus takes her face in both his hands, and Petra grips his wrists, fingers sliding. "You're strong," he says, fiercely. "You know you are. I know you are. What they think doesn't matter. Okay? It's just you, and me, and we know the truth."

"Okay," Petra says, tears prickling her eyes. She won her Games with a weapon she'd never mastered in training, bludgeoning and smashing after a decade of fighting with knives not much longer than her fingertips. Now they dress her in pink and coo over her curls as though she hadn't fought to the death in the pouring rain with her hair plastered to her neck with filth and blood. But Brutus — Brutus knows, because he's been there too.

"Good." Brutus pulls back and gives her a hard stare. "And sweetheart, if you want to play with weapons then we'll play with weapons, but you ever stab me again without permission and you'll be playing bulls-eye with plastic butter knives until the Quell, do you understand?"

Petra nods, and Brutus bends and kisses her forehead before hauling her up into his arms. "The war paint looks good on you," he says. "I think we better go wash it off before you get a taste for my blood."

"Only with permission," Petra says, curling her arms around his neck and letting her head rest against his shoulder. Her mentor let her stab him in the ribs and he'll let her do it again, and all she has to do is ask. Petra laughs quietly in spite of herself, and Brutus hefts her up a little higher.

* * *

That night before bed Petra stares at her reflection, shower-damp hair hanging down over her shoulders, the ends curling as they dry. Her eyes catch the scissors on her desk, and Petra would say she does it without thinking but that would be a lie. She means every single second as she grabs the scissors, pulls a section of hair taut and snips right through it. The rasp of the blades against each other settles her raw nerves like a balm, and Petra snips and snips and lets the hair fall to her dresser in dark red coils.

Once it's done Petra puts the scissors away, sweeps up the dead hair and drops it into the trash can, then picks up her phone and calls Brutus. "I cut off my hair," she says. The words come out calmer than she expected, and she waits for the explosion. For a Victor, image is everything, and after she just endorsed that hair care line there's really no escaping notice.

"Knife or scissors?" Brutus asks.

"Scissors. From my desk."

"Did you cut yourself or just the hair?"

Petra lets a newly shorn strand curl around her finger. "Just the hair. I cleaned everything up and put it away and didn't set the hair on fire either." She should get at least half points for that last, even if she only held back because burnt hair smells terrible and never goes away.

"Good girl," Brutus says, and that's that. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow we'll get it fixed up so it looks like it was on purpose."

After hanging up Petra climbs into bed, and she toys with the baby-fine wisps at the nape of her neck until she falls asleep. The next morning Petra checks her reflection and laughs out loud — half the curls have flattened to her head, the others sticking up in random bunches — then runs her fingers through her hair, grabs her cane and heads to the kitchen for breakfast.

Brutus is already there, standing at the stove and flipping pancakes, and he barks out a laugh at the sight of her. "You look a sight," he says. "Can't say that's a look anyone will be itching to copy any time soon."

"Thank you," Petra says primly, and grins when Brutus winks.


End file.
